Posts Tagged ‘positive thinking’

Have you ever been near someone whose attitude shifts the entire atmosphere of a room? Maybe their cheery disposition brightens a stressful event. Or perhaps, their poor perspective sabotages a promotion, a relationship, or a major decision. Now the tough question: Which sounds more like you?

ATTITUDE COSTS AND BENEFITS

Attitude can be described as the general perspective we have on any and all aspects of life. It influences how we think, feel, and interact with our surroundings and others. Positive and negative attitudes seemingly attract compatible outcomes. The more positive your attitude, the more likely a positive result and vice versa. Your attitude is one of the most powerful tools you have to influence lifelong success… or not.

A positive perspective can benefit your work, relationships and general enjoyment in life. Decreased stress, greater peace, confidence, financial independence, and overall better health are just some of the benefits of a great attitude.

Negative perspectives create much less desirable outcomes. Increases in fear and worry, developing a “victim mindset” to your circumstances and lacking deep and meaningful relationships are some of the costs of a poor attitude.

POSITIVE STRATEGIES FOR SUCCESS

Since attitudes play such a major role, it is an invaluable gift to recognize what attitude you have and how it is influencing your life. Not everything in life is pleasant, desired, or fixable, but if you see room for an attitude adjustment, you can control it. That’s good news! Try these helpful suggestions to build and maintain a more positive perspective.

Model – Look for a mentor or role model and implement their strategies.

Grow – Learn from mistakes by keeping the lesson, and not the failure, in mind.

Setting goals can be tricky. Staying focused, even harder. Motivation is key in setting and completing goals. Examining our desires, values, and ideals can inspire us to act and help us control our level of motivation.

5 STEPS TO HELP YOU GET MOTIVATED

Motivation begins with a choice. The following tips will help you maintain and gain momentum:

Identify – Consider your core values, beliefs, and desires. How do these interrelate with your work, health, and relationships? Prioritize their importance to you. Then look for themes emerging from your list.

Seek accountability – Surround yourself with supportive people. Encouragement is vital, especially from those who’ve completed a similar goal. Constantly competing with others can be very isolating.

Inspire – Look for ways to uplift yourself daily. Consider posting an inspiring quote or picture to your mirror. Read about influential people and see what wisdom you can glean.

Consider the alternative – If you don’t make this change, what will your life be like? Your reaction to this question is a clue to how much you value this goal.

Forgive yourself – It’s easy to be your own worst enemy. Understand you will days you fail, make mistakes, and get rejected. Stay positive and keep moving forward.

GOAL-SETTING TIPS

Getting started is often the hardest part in goal-setting. Step out of the gate with these guidelines:

Think big – Put logic aside for a moment and dream big. Negative thinking is a dream-killer. Just because you cannot reach a goal today doesn’t mean it’s not a possibility.

Break it down – Goals should be broken up into attainable and measurable tasks. Setting a daily or weekly goal keeps you motivated and helps track your progress.

Stay positive – Use uplifting language when you’re writing your goals. Focus on what you want for yourself rather than what you don’t. Write a vision statement to help you stay on course.

Motivation and goal setting is a life-long process. As we move through life, our circumstances and passions will change. Stay flexible and adapt your goals as needed. As you achieve one goal, be sure to celebrate the victory.

Self-esteem is a loaded concept. We don’t have enough, or we have too much. Maybe it causes flashbacks of awkward teen years, or reminds you of someone who thinks to highly of himself.

Growing self-esteem means fostering confidence in yourself and your abilities. It reflects an overall sense of value or worth and filters our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Self-esteem impacts our physical, emotional, and mental health, and it plays a role in our relationships and jobs.

If you are someone looking to better your self-confidence, here are some practical steps to take inventory of your thoughts.

A health self-esteem translates into accepting and valuing yourself for exactly who you are, even your flaws. Rearranging your thoughts and prioritizing emotional self-care takes time and practice. The more you challenge your negative thoughts and habits, the greater the pride you can take in yourself. Remember, there is only one unique you, and you are valuable to this world!

Some days 24 hours just doesn’t seem to be enough. Between family priorities, practicing good self-care, and juggling work responsibilities, it’s easy to feel stressed. Even though we choose how to spend our time, our to-do list sometimes crowds out what gives us the greatest enjoyment.

Our lives naturally fall out of balance from time to time. When this occurs, we struggle to regulate our responsibilities and what we enjoy most. Taking the time to assess how things are going gives us insight to realign our priorities. Consider these questions when work and family are out of sync:

Do you regularly set aside time to spend with your family?

When you are with family, do you feel anxious or guilty about not working?

At work, what triggers you to feel like you should be spending more time with your family?

Strategies for Achieving Greater Balance

Limit distractions – There may be times of the day you are more distracted or procrastinate. How could you use your time more efficiently during this period? Perhaps limit the frequency you check emails or use social media.

Know your values – Write down what you desire most from life. What activities are important for you to do with your family? Determine what is non-negotiable in your life.

Say no – Practice saying no to tasks that fit outside your values. This helps you avoid the stress and tension of over-commitment.

Organize – Is your workspace messy? Your home cluttered? Taking opportunities to organize will save you time in the long run.

Remember, life will happen. When it does, things will typically fall out of balance for a time. Stay positive. Use the knowledge you’ve gained, take a step back, and assess. Proper planning is always a good start to swing an imbalanced life back into perspective.

Author Andy Andrews has determined that there are seven characteristics that each successful person has in common. He strongly believes in “the butterfly effect”: even the smallest action can have dramatic consequences. It has been found that the flap of a butterfly’s wings is inexplicably intertwined with the birth of a hurricane around the world.

Using these seven principles can make positive changes in your life:

Be responsible – make a decision. Harry Truman signed his name on a sheet of paper that authorized the atomic bomb used to end World War II.

Seek wisdom – listen to the guidance that is offered from people you trust. Napoleon lost at Waterloo because he failed to listen to his troops.

Be a person of action – seize the moment. Bill Gates decided to drop out of Harvard to build a computer system that would one day become Microsoft.

Choose to be happy – put a smile on your face. If there are two prospective employees with the same qualification but one of them complains, and the other one smiles and is happy, whom would you hire?

Forgive! Forget anger management – use anger resolution. Joshua Chamberlain was chosen by President Lincoln to accept the Confederate surrender at Appomattox. There, Chamberlain stunned the world with a show of forgiveness: he ordered his troops to attention, saluting General Robert E. Lee and the defeated South.

Persist without exception. Nelson Mandela sought to transform a country filled with racial oppression into an open democracy. His qualities of forgiveness, patience and persistence were revealed to the world after he was released from prison.

Every day we make choices about how to care for ourselves. From what we’ll eat to how active we’ll be, every decision has costs and benefits. Choosing healthy goals can feel intimidating, especially when we’re lacking the “New Year’s Resolution” momentum. Making specific, measurable, and attainable goals sets you up for the life you desire.

Goal-Setting Tips:

Specific– Many times, our goals are vague and too broad. This fails to inspire and motivate us to make a lifestyle change. Instead, clearly describe what you would like to do and with what specific behavior.

For example, you might say, “I want to get fit.” But how often are you going to exercise and for how long? There’s a big difference between, “I want to be healthier,” and “I want to go for an hour-long run, three times this week, so I will have energy to play with my kids.”

Measurable – In addition to specificity, goals should be measurable. Writing down our behavior or tracking it wan an app will offer clues as to why we’re moving toward or away from our goals. For example, if your goal is to lose 15 pounds, this might involve counting your calories or tracking your daily percentage of vitamins and minerals.

Attainable –Goals should be realistic, given your time, finances, abilities, etc. Set small, attainable steps toward the larger goal. These might be daily, weekly, or monthly. Besides offering encouragement, small and attainable goals provide opportunities for rewards along the way.

Setting health goals are best done in community. Surrounding yourself with supportive peers pursuing similar goals is very helpful. Also, say your goals aloud. Tell people what you’re working toward and how you’ll get there. The more you speak out your goals and why you’re doing this, the more you’ll believe you can actually achieve them. There’s no time like today, even if it isn’t January 1st.

You’ve probably heard countless ways to manage stress: exercise, get enough sleep, talk to a friend, meditate, write things down – the list goes on. But according to Huffington Post blogger Jon Wortmann, before you can even thing about managing your stress, there are three things you must do first.

Notice Stress

This seems obvious, but sometimes we’re so busy or distracted we completely miss our body’s signs that we’re feeling stressed. Have you been getting a lot of headaches or stomachaches? Does it fee like your having a panic attack? Has your appetite or sleep schedule changed? Your brain may be telling you something needs your attention. Instead of shaking off or ignoring these signs, consider if they’re connected to stress.

Admit You’re Stressed

This doesn’t mean you can’t handle what’s on your plate. Once you admit you feel stressed, you can begin to focus on what’s most important at that moment. Making these kinds of choices can tell your brain to turn down the alarm as you work to get things under control.

Focus on One Thing You Want to Think or Feel

If you find yourself in an immediately stressful situation (heart is racing, palms are sweating), focus on the emotion you want to be feeling. Imagine yourself in your favorite location, eating your favorite food, next to someone you care about, or anything that can help you feel calmer quickly. Being able to recall these calming memories in a time of stress can help you work through it and focus instead on what need to get done.

We all experience negative events and emotions. Unfortunately, it’s part of life. The important thing is what we do with those emotions. We can let them bring us down, get the better of us, or use them for good. They can help us to become better people and play a positive role in our well-being. Which do you choose to do?

Use challenges to gain perspective. The challenges we face in life are opportunities for personal growth and development. These adversities help bring out valuable lessons and expected gifts. They can help highlight what’s truly important in life.

Discover compassion through shame. when we experience shame or humiliation, we often avoid connecting with other people, fearing they’ll see the flaws we’re trying to hide. However, when we’re able to work through these emotions, it can help us connect with others and become more compassionate and empathetic.

Find gratitude after a loss. Often we don’t realize how valuable something is until we lose it. Experiencing a loss can help us feel grateful for what we have now and not take it for granted.

Turn anger into creativity. University researchers found that when creative professionals began their day with a negative emotion, they had greater creative output. They were able to channel their anger into their work. They were also able to focus longer while brainstorming.

Spur determination from jealousy. When we become jealous of someone, it can drive us to better ourselves. Envy can help us figure out what it is we want in our own life and then place us on the path to achieve it.

Our thoughts have the power to turn the ordinary into extraordinary, for it is our thoughts that fuel our words and behavior. Thinking well makes life less stressful, motivates our behaviors, and can improve our physical health with less risk of depression, heart disease, and even the common cold. Thinking well does not mean we need to ignore reality when life is hard; rather, we must simply reframe what’s happening to stay positive in the situation.

The best way to think well is to evaluate our self-talk. Self-talk is what we tell ourselves about the events that happen to us and around us, being comprised of facts and our interpretation of those facts. Herein lies the power. We can evaluate facts and stay positive, or we might walk into one of these four negative self-talk snares.

Black and white thinking. This is the “all-or-nothing” thought process. Life is either awesome or awful. There’s no in-between.

Personalizing. This thinking assumes everything is about you. (Ex: If you don’t get the job, the employer didn’t like you. A friend cancels plans? They don’t want to hang out with you.)

Generalizing. When you generalize, you presume you will always fail based on one mistake. (Ex: if you ask someone on a date, and they refuse, you will die all alone.) These thoughts leap to failure.

Chances are, if you’re breathing, you’re experiencing varying levels of stress all within a 24-hour period. Perhaps you regularly judge your performance in life, work, and relationships. This pressure and consistent negative thinking puts you at a greater risk of anxiety and depression.

Mindfulness is one way to redirect yourself away from these thoughts. This meditative practice focuses on the present moment in a non-judgmental way. You begin to experience the world through a new lens, engaging all your senses.

How to Practice Mindfulness

Learn the art of mindfulness by following the steps listed below.

Focus and practice good breathing – First, sit up straight in a chair with your feet flat on the floor. Pay attention to what it feels like to breathe in and out. Relax your m ind and dismiss other thoughts. Notice your abdomen as it rises and falls with each breath. If your mind does begin to wander, redirect your thoughts back to the exercise.

Pay attention to your senses – Focusing on your sense can be calming. Try this exercise while walking outside. Concentrate on what you hear, see, and smell. Take a deep breath. Direct your mind away from any negative or stressful thoughts.

Listen carefully to others – Truly listen to people you’re meeting for the first time and those you’ve known a long time. Hear what they’re saying with new ears. Consider what messages they are trying to convey.

Delay judgment – We tend to size people up immediately. When we are slow to judge others, we discover what’s special about the individual. In turn, we might be less negative about the world around us.

Mindfulness might seem awkward or uneasy at first. However, as you practice it every day for several months, it will begin to feel more natural. Dialing down the stress level is always beneficial so when you practice mindfulness, great things can happen.